


Invisible

by stephanericher



Series: SASO 17 [18]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 20:56:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12690099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: She looks a little like she’s waiting for him to say something, and maybe she wants him to call her on it. Maybe this is the part where she tells him he doesn’t deserve it, for what he’d done to Taiga, for (regardless of that) his low, low ceiling.





	Invisible

**Author's Note:**

> written for saso br3
> 
> maybe the same verse as 'two for holding'

He’s been back a few days, has just a few more before heading out to Akita, one last stretch until he’s home for good. That’s reason enough for wanting to push this conversation out, that they’ll have time then--or not at all. Maybe he doesn’t ever have to bring it up. It’s stupid anyway; it’s a stupid thought to have but Tatsuya’s told himself that often enough and it’s still careening through his head like a reckless skater about to crash the net. Why not him? Why bring Taiga home just as he’s getting some exhibition games against real opponents, chances that Tatsuya’s been passed over for? Why give him an opportunity he doesn’t need? Is Alex being subtle, trying to let him down in a passive-aggressive kind of way? Tatsuya twirls his stick in his hands, closing his eyes.   
  
He’s in Alex’s fucking living room and he can’t talk to her about this; he still can’t say it, can’t just put forth the bitter accusation that Alex is favoring Taiga with all of this. She looks a little like she’s waiting for him to say something, and maybe she wants him to call her on it. Maybe this is the part where she tells him he doesn’t deserve it, for what he’d done to Taiga, for (regardless of that) his low, low ceiling.   
  
There’s a stack of pucks on the coffee table; Alex is still busy in the kitchen and Tatsuya picks one up, flipping it off the untaped blade of his stick. They’re all supposed to go out and play street hockey later, and he knows he’ll end up scraping himself bloody on the asphalt because he’s still not used to the uneven asphalt under the wheels of his inline skates all over again, like getting used to the ice the first time but in reverse (and there’s no reason for it to take so long; this is supposed to feel like his hockey home, and yet). The puck bounces into the air; Tatsuya’s eye’s been trained to watch the spin for years; he knows how to meet it with the blade as it comes down.  
  
“You’re mad at me,” Alex says, coming in, carton of orange juice tucked under her arm.  
  
Tatsuya balances the puck at the end of his stick and looks up at her. “Kinda, yeah.”  
  
It comes out more honest than he’d meant it; he shouldn’t be mad at her for this. Who wouldn’t favor Taiga? Taiga’s the better half, the one who’d gotten used to climbing as the hill got steeper and gotten ahead of Tatsuya, lengthening the distance between them like the way he glides across the ice on his longer legs. Tatsuya flicks the puck into the air again, and Alex sits down next to him.  
  
“It’s harder to do things for you, you know. I always feel like I’m overstepping, or that you’re going to feel like I’m overstepping--which, I guess, shouldn’t stop me as often as it does. But you know where you’re going; you’ll be home soon even if it takes you a little longer. I wasn’t worried about you.”  
  
That stings a little; even after a lifetime of putting up walls to get people not to worry it’s always been a little different with Alex, who worries because she cares, looks at him across the bench in the empty rink and tightens the laces on his skates for him and watches his face closely.  
  
“That’s not how I meant it,” she says, exhaling and catching the puck off the stick, rolling it on the palms of her hands. “Though, I wonder…”  
  
Alex doesn’t finish; it’s no good trying to figure out what the other end of that sentence could have been, not when she’s said so much. She does have a point; Tatsuya doesn’t need any favors from her and he’d resent it if she tried to give him any and yet, it still feels like something gnawing in his gut that she’d done this for Taiga and not for him, something Taiga knows how to accept and Tatsuya wouldn’t want but that he covets, always way too fucking greedy.   
  
“You know he didn’t play competitively for a year,” says Alex (and Tatsuya knows, his fault, Taiga had been so lonely and he’s still so damn good now). “You’re always going to make your own opportunities.”  
  
And he’s always done that; he’s always taken a certain sort of pride in having to pave his own way. She’s not wrong, but Tatsuya keeps circling back.  
  
“I’ll get over it,” he says.  
  
“I know,” says Alex, tossing the puck back into his bare hand.  
  
She plays with the cap on the orange juice; it’s sweating on the table. The key clicks in the lock and the door, catching on the low overhang, stutters open; Taiga drops the spare key on the hall table and his hockey gear on the floor. Alex watches, half-amused as Taiga practically falls onto Tatsuya, his hands on Tatsuya’s waist and his mouth against Tatsuya’s mouth. They only have a few more days and it’s not enough; even when this is hard and easy (and hard again, running so with the built-up resentment like plaque on teeth that Tatsuya can’t quite scrub away) at once it’s still so good and too much.   
  
“You ready?” Taiga says.  
  
“Gimme a few,” says Alex; Taiga slides onto the couch next to Tatsuya, arm around his shoulders, hand meeting his on the stick.  
  
It’s the brand he doesn’t like but Tatsuya’s fine with, lighter sticks that break more easily under the force Taiga always uses, long slapshot after long slapshot toward the net after practice should be over, the flash of black tape over the blade against the black puck and grey asphalt, the dirty rink floor (ice, now, but how much have they played that way together). And Taiga smiles, still, and maybe Tatsuya doesn’t have to think about the bitterness right now, not when Taiga’s pushing affection at him like a sweet saucer pass across the ice.


End file.
